Olympic Figure Skating Icon and Coach Ron Ludington Dies at 85: 'A Powerful and Great Man'

Ron Ludington, an Olympic figure skating bronze medalist and coach, died Thursday at age 85, the Delaware News Journal reported.

Ludington, nicknamed "Luddy," won the U.S Championship in figure skating four times between 1957 and 1960 with his first wife, Nancy Rouillard, before they claimed the bronze medal at the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California. They remain one of six U.S. pairs to ever win a medal at the Games.

In 1999, Ludington was inducted into the Figure Skating Hall of Fame.

Ludington's coaching career began in 1961, but the height of his success came mostly during the 1980s, when he coached at the Skating Club of Wilmington in Delaware. He was also the director of the University of Delaware's Ice Skating Science Development Center until 2010.

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In total, Ludington coached more than 30 athletes in nine consecutive Winter Olympics.

Among the athletes Ludington helped train included the 1992 pair of Calla Urbanski and Rocky Marval, 1984 and 1988 Olympian Scott Gregory, and three-time national champion and two-time Olympian Johnny Weir.

"He was at every one of my practices," Weir told the Delaware News Journal . "He basically oversaw all the young talent at UD. He would always tell me to work hard, and that if I did that, I'd make it."

Said Gregory, "Luddy was such a powerful and great man, and everyone looked up to him with such respect. He was such a great skater and coach that you were almost scared to have a lesson with him because you wanted to do so well for him."

Ludington was married twice: first to his ice skating partner Nancy, and then to skating coach Mary Batdorf, with whom he had a son, Michael, before their divorce in the mid-1970s.